Re: review of content type rules by IETF/HTTP community

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007, Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> [The sniffing rules section is] currently part of the HTML 5 work 
> because it's in the text that we adopted for review on 9 May and we 
> haven't taken it out. 
> http://www.w3.org/2002/02/mid/46423D1F.5060500@w3.org;list=public-html
> 
> According to my understanding of Web Architecture, it's quite a wart on 
> the HTML spec; it belongs elsewhere.

The problem is that integrates very tightly with the way that browsing 
contexts work, and integrates tightly with how session history work, both 
of which are tightly integrated with how the Window object works, which 
itself is tightly integrated with event dispatch and parsing. It's also 
directly related to the section on hyperlinks, which is directly related 
to <a>, <link> and <area>.

In addition, there are sniffing-specific requirements to elements like 
<img>, <script>, and <embed>, as well as some references to the sniffing 
rules for elements like <object> and <iframe>.

It's not really clear to me how to (or whether to) separate the sniffing 
section out from the rest. The "real" HTML, which HTML5 is attempting to 
specify, is one big mess of interrelated components which have their 
tendrils deep inside each other. I'm trying to make them as modular as 
possible in the documentation, but there's only so much one can do. I 
don't know that we'll ever usefully be able to split these bits out -- 
it's possible that the "purity" gains would be far outweighed by the very 
real losses in browser vendors trying to understand how these things all 
work together.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 20 August 2007 20:01:58 UTC